Married Life (2007) *1/2

Married Life is about a middle aged man named Harry Allen (Chris Cooper) who has fallen in love with a younger woman named Kay (Rachel McAdams) and decides to leave his wife Pat (Patricia Clarkson). He discusses all of this with his friend Richard and even introduces his friend to his lover. This is where things get a little complicated. Richard has fallen in love with Kay. Meanwhile Harry realizes that his wife is so fragile that she would be humiliated beyond belief by an abandonment. So Harry decides to kill her. Are you following me so far?

This is one of those ensemble cast pieces that you see from time to time that is banking more on its cast than its script or direction. Cooper, McAdams, and Clarkson are great in their roles giving us performances that anyone would be proud of if they had been in another movie. After Brosnan had abandoned James Bond with The Matador I was hoping he would continue to shun that suave, womanizing exterior and try something different than what he's been doing since Remington Steele. I was disappointed. Brosnan plays Richard as a Jame Bond that Roger Moore would even say was too old to be seducing the young Kay. You could say the same thing about Cooper's Harry, but in that instance it was more mutual. Richard is merely a wolf that Brosnan plays by pulling a paint by numbers acting style that stifles the other actors. He tends to overact in some scenes and be barely visible in others.

The script is a horrible piece that flows like a plugged toilet. Basic plot twists and basic reactions are the name of the game in this film with no one acting the way an actual human being would act in the same circumstances. I expect to have reality bullshitted to me in something like Alice in Wonderland, but when you're showing a quaint little town in the lake 1940's we have to have some real reactions not something to further the story along. The direction is mediocre at best and horrible at worst. Sergio Leone could get away with a close up to give the audience tension.Ira Sachs, who also wrote the screenplay, gives us wonderful views of the casts nostrils. Yes, if lighted correctly I could have seen Christ Coppers sinuses. Wonderful.

I wonder why this thing was even called Married Life. The title doesn't fit to well. I would have called this film Crap. Pure crap. The only thing that's saving it from the dreaded half star is Cooper, McAdams, and Clarkson, whose acting save what this picture would have been. But saving this film would have been the equivalent of trying to bale out the Titanic with a measuring cup.